Security council poised for key Iraq report

UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix is today presenting the Security Council with a crucial interim report on the hunt for banned weapons in Iraq.

He is expected to say no "smoking gun" has been found, but also to criticise the Iraqis for not cooperating more fully with the inspectors.

While not presenting a clear-cut case against Saddam Hussein, the report is expected to strengthen the hand of the hawks in Washington who never thought the Iraqi dictator would disarm voluntarily. The Security Council meets at 3.30pm

The United States does not believe Iraq's claims to have no more banned chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programmes, and has threatened Saddam with war if he does not comply with UN resolutions and disarm.

Today's report by Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the UN's nuclear agency, will be key to US efforts to bolster international support for a war - and to the efforts of sceptics to stop one.

Blix has written a toughly worded 16 page report that he will read during the public part of today's council meeting.

"I have been working very hard and very carefully on the details," he said, without giving any details.

A senior US official said the US ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte, will "remind the council that they all agreed in November that this would be Iraq's last opportunity to comply and that two months is more than enough time to test Saddam's intentions to co-operate."

The inspectors still do not know what happened to Iraq's stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons or how much time they have left to find the answers. But ElBaradei intends to make the case for more time.

"We are just in mid-course and we still need to exhaust the option of inspections before we think of any alternatives," he said after arriving in New York from Vienna yesterday. "We still need more time and that depends obviously on how intensive our work is and how co-operative Iraq is."